According to the Reconstruction Agency, about 229,000 people still live as evacuees, and in Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures, as of the end of February, about 80,000 of them were living mainly in prefabricated temporary housing units.

As the tsunami waters rose around him, one boy desperately stayed afloat clinging to his evacuation helmet. A refrigerator with no door floated past so he climbed inside, and survived by staying in his "lifeboat" until the danger eventually passed.

Since its formation in the wake of the 2004 Sumatra tsunami, American nonprofit organization All Hands has dispatched more than 6,000 volunteers to the scenes of more than a dozen disasters across te globe.

KESENNUMA, Miyagi Prefecture - Across the Pacific, the birthplace of jazz reached out to help a local group of school musicians keep their sound alive following the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake.

WASHINGTON - Copies of a hand-lettered newspaper, produced by editors and reporters after they lost their printing press in the Great East Japan Earthquake, will be displayed at a journalism museum here.